


The Rhaella Drabbles

by crossingwinter



Series: Rhaella Series [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mentions of Canonical Abuse, Other, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2016-01-30
Packaged: 2018-02-16 06:49:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 9,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2259963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tumblr Drabbles centered around Rhaella Targaryen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Gown for Joanna

**Author's Note:**

  * For [casterlyqueen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/casterlyqueen/gifts).



> Please note that these all used to be found in my [Pre-Canon Drabbles](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1330978/chapters/2772163) compilation. But I decided to put them here instead.
> 
> I am also putting these in a series, not with my tumblr drabbles but with my Rhaella fics. For reasons.
> 
> Those reasons are my Rhaella feels.

The Queen gave her a gown for her wedding, a dress of red and gold made from the finest silk.

"You’ll make your husband so happy in his colors," the Queen said, as she bid Joanna farewell. "I shall take comfort in that—that you shall make him happy." Joanna did her best not to notice the way the Queen’s hands trembled. 

"You’ll hardly miss me," Joanna murmured. "You’ll have some lovely young handmaid soon, and you’ll forget all about me."

The Queen closed her eyes, her lips pursing. ”I have not forgotten Princess Martell, nor shall I forget Lady Lannister.” She pressed a kiss to Joanna’s forehead. ”Farewell, sweet Joanna.”

The Queen kept her head high as she made her way back into the Keep, a solitary figure clad in black and flanked by White.


	2. Life wasn't a fairy tale.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [wetwasteofagirl](wetwasteofagirl.tumblr.com).

Life wasn’t a fairy tale. 

Maybe it had been one once, while watching Ser Bonifer tilt, banners fluttering in the spring air and the gasps of the crowd as his lance struck Ser Lyle and shattered his shield on his arm. Maybe it had been when she’d given him her favor—a pink silk ribbon that she’d got from a merchant out of Lys that had tiny pearls sewn all over it. He’d worn the favor tied to his right arm so that when he rode the pearls rattled against his lance.

Maybe it had been once, when Joanna and Nymeria had first come to court—playmates for her at first, and then handmaids. They had giggled and laughed together, and talked of knights they loved, and dreams that they had for the children they would one day present to their husbands.

But life wasn’t a song, it wasn’t a fairy tale, and the woman staring back at her out of the mirror was nearly unrecognizable. 

There was a bruise barely visible beneath her collarbone from where Aerys had bit her the night before—bit her, growling, even though she had cried out and told him that he was hurting her. He hadn’t heard her, though, she could tell that much from his dark eyes, purple that was nearly black so dilated were his pupils. Her eyes own eyes were sunken now, her pale skin nearly blue from tired tears. Her lips were pale and chapped.

How unlike a Queen she looked; unlike the Princess who had giggled with her friends, and clutched at her breast every time Ser Bonifer’s lance had struck. Where was that Queen now, that Princess?

When it had been announced that she was to wed Aerys, she’d wept into her pillow for days it seemed. Nymeria had rolled her eyes, and said that at least she knew her brother, and at least he loved her in his own way. But Nymeria didn’t understand, and Rhaella didn’t know how to tell her—tell either of them—that the song was over now. Nymeria and Joanna, pleased with their matches, had whispered together and laughed together but neither of them knew what Rhaella knew, feared what Rhaella feared—that Aerys’ temper would get the better of him.

And Nymeria had left, married first of the three of them, and Joanna had missed her tremendously—Rhaella knew that. But it was only after Nymeria left that Joanna saw Aerys as Rhaella did, that she would stare between her Queen and her King with wide green eyes, nervous. She would clutch at Rhaella’s hand, and squeeze and Rhaella knew that they didn’t need to say any words to understand one another completely. In the end, Joanna had fled from him, even if he did follow her to her wedding, but she had been free…

Rhaella closed her eyes, shut out the reflection in the mirror, the sad ghost of the Queen she’d once been. Her Rhaegar, her splendid son was grown now, riding in tourneys where the smallfolk screamed his name. And Viserys—he stood nearly as tall as her waist now, and prattled on about dragons. 

Dragons. Didn’t songs and fairy tales say that Princesses were held captives by dragons? She almost laughed. So it was—but no knight could save her from this dragon.


	3. The Salt Tower

Rhaella liked the Salt Tower.  That wasn’t actually what it was called, and it wasn’t really even a tower, but that’s what she called it.  She’d called it that since she was very small, running around the walls of the Red Keep.  She liked it first because it was more pink than red, pink because its stones were lightly coated in seasalt, and pink was her favorite color. When she was four, she’d licked the wall on a dare and it had tasted sea-salty beneath her tongue and she’d called it the Salt Tower ever since.   When she was older, when she’d lived through her first long winter in King’s Landing, she learned that during the winter storms, when waves crashed high against the walls of the Keep, they hit the Salt Tower first.  

Rhaella liked watching the sun rise from the Tower, watching light spill over the Narrow Sea and Blackwater Bay and the city behind her.  It was a peaceful time of the day—her son and grandchildren asleep, and nothing but the morning cries of the gulls over head and the relentless rustle of the sea at her feet.  

Rhaella liked forgetting—forgetting that there was a war raging somewhere to the north and south, that Rhaegar was still missing with the Stark girl, that Aerys came to her at night, that Joanna and Nymeria were dead, that Elia was ill again, that she had not flowered now for two months.

Rhaella liked the stillness of the Salt Tower, the peace of it, the constancy, and knowing that one day, some other Queen might find peace in watching the sun rise in the east.


	4. The First Time Aerys Burned Someone

The first time Aerys burned someone, Rhaella wept. Wept as she’d never wept before in her life, wept as she knew no one had ever wept through all of time.

She’d known Aerys all her life—all his life—and yet the look in his eyes was so…it wasn’t the Aerys that she’d played with as a girl who sat the Iron Thrown, his chin sunk down to his chest, his mouth hanging open as he watched the screaming writhing form of a man who had crossed the Dragon.

As time went on, though, she learned to hide her tears—save them for later when Aerys would come to her bed, his blood high, his lips slick with drool. She learned to stare at the burning bodies and see nothing, not the light of the flame, not the smoke rising through the hall. She saw only the stars over Summerhall before it, too, had burned.

Sometimes, Rhaella wondered at her brother’s madness, the way that he stared at the flames with wide eyes as though they were the only things in the world that mattered. Sometimes, she wondered if she, herself, would go mad too.


	5. It All Came Back To Joanna

It all came back to Joanna, didn’t it? She would have given anything in the world to have chosen a different handmaid in her youth, but how was she to have known? Aerys did tend to ruin everything, whether she anticipated it or not.

She did not know if he actually loved her. Love was one of those words that Rhaella did not understand. Had she loved Bonifer? Had she loved her father? Her mother? For none of them—not a one—was comparable to her love for Rhaegar. She didn’t think anyone could love anyone else so much as she loved Rhaegar. And yet Aerys claimed to love Joanna, claimed he had loved her since first he had clapped eyes on her.

She hoped he did. It would make it all less horrible—if such a thing were possible. Dinners between the four of them—Aerys and herself, Joanna and Tywin—were always so painful, for Aerys would never stop looking at Joanna, and Joanna would shrink into her seat and reach for Tywin’s hand under the table, as if she required him there to draw the strength she needed to exist under such a gaze. And Tywin—Rhaella feared Tywin more than any of the others. War was in his eyes when he glared at his King, the fierce desire to protect what was his. He tried not to look at Aerys, though—she knew that much. His attention was always on Joanna, her jade eyes downcast as though not looking at any of them meant that she could avoid it all.

They said that Daenys the Dreamer had seen the fall of Valyria, the end of the Freehold’s power, and had guided her family to safety. Rhaella did not need visions of the future to know that everything was coming to an end.


	6. Brushing Her Hair

She didn’t let her handmaids near her after Aerys came to her.   Bad enough that they saw her disheveled, bruised, mauled—but she did not need them cooing over her like she was some pathetic puppy, abandoned by its mother and kicked repeatedly.

She was a Dragon—she was a  _Queen._ She did not need their pity.  And she certainly did not need them to hover over her, wondering if they’d see her strong or weak when Rhaella was neither.  Rhaella was spinning, Rhaella was roiling, Rhaella was unsure, even to herself, what she was.

He had come to her bed so rarely before.  Once she had bemoaned it, that Rhaegar would be her only child, that she was unable to do her duty as Queen when it was loneliness she wished to dispel.  Now she envied her past loneliness, the horrible ache that  Nymeria’s departure, and then Joanna’s, had left in her heart.  She had not asked him to fill the void that they had left—the void that her new handmaids sought to fill but never could.  She did not want  _him_  to fill the void.  She wanted her sons, wanted her friends, wanted her mother to hold her and rock her as if she were a child again, letting Rhaella weep tears into her brocade gown and hush her while stroking her head and singing to her about Good Queen Alysanne as she cried herself to sleep.

In the hours after Aerys left her, Rhaella sat in perfect stillness, listening to the crashing of the waves against the base of Aegon’s High Hill, the cry of gulls, her own breath pushing in and out of her nostrils.  And, when the sun began to rise and the room went from pale blue to pale red, Rhaella reached for her brush, and began ease the knots from her hair.


	7. On Marrying Aerys

__

_Sometimes, she wondered what would have happened if she’d refused to marry him, if she’d done as Nymeria had counseled her and run off with Bonifer—whether for a night or for the rest of her life, it did not matter now._ _In truth, she’d been far too afraid of letting everyone down.  She’d always been afraid of letting everyone down._

_She remembered her grandfather’s eyes when he’d bade them marry. She remembered hot disappointment rising in her throat, her face flushing, her eyes stinging as she’d tried to look anywhere but at her royal grandfather.  His eyes weren’t unkind—not truly—but they were unrelenting and she knew that begging and pleading and crying would do her no good, would do neither of them any good, for she knew that Aerys wanted this no more than she.  So instead, she had curtsied and turned away, hoping no one would see the way that her hands trembled as she crossed the throne room._

_She knew that it was her grandfather’s right to marry her to whomever he pleased, but why was it that his prophecies and traditions mattered more to him than the happiness of his own grandchildren?  Why was it that all she’d ever wanted would be destroyed by vows before a septon, her dreams dashed more thoroughly than if she’d had a bucket of frigid water thrown on her in her sleep?_

_How many of her mothers’ mothers had withstood what she must now withstand? F_ _or traditions, her own father had said, must be observed, even though there was no more meaning to them than there was meaning to the sand along the shores of Blackwater Bay—sand which was undoubtedly older than these traditions which had made a ruin of her life.  Traditions were only traditions so long as you continued them. Hadn’t her grandfather allowed for the breaking of this tradition with the marriages of his own children?  Why now must Rhaella marry her brother, as those great names—Daena, Helaena, Alysanne, Rhaneys, Visenya—had had to do?_ _Had each of them made mask of a smile at the idea of marrying a brother so that no one else could see the way she wept?_


	8. When Bonifer Rode

When Bonifer rode, Rhaella’s heart thudded in her chest—not because she was nervous, but because for the first time in her life, she cared if someone won or lost a tilt.  When Bonifer rode, Rhaella pinched her dress between her fingers because she couldn’t show anyone how much it mattered that he knock Lord Royce from his horse, but it mattered more than anything in the world.  When Bonifer rode, Rhaella believed that her life was the stuff from which songs were born.

He gave her a crown of roses to wear, great white flowers that he likened to the shade of her hair.  She would have preferred them to be a pale pink, a color he had once likened to her lips, but it hardly mattered, because that crown of roses filled her heart with more joy than if they had been her royal grandfather’s crown.  The air was full of the scent of roses, and her heart was full of Bonifer and nothing in the world mattered, for on this day—if only for a day—Rhaella was a queen.


	9. On Losing Rhaegar

Rhaella could not sleep, and so she stared at the fire in her hearth, crackling ever lower and lower and casting a flicker of orange and red around the room. In his sleep, Viserys had nuzzled into her bosom, and she still felt the damp in her shift from his tears.

Her grief was beyond tears. She felt an ache down in her soul, an exhaustion so intense it kept her from sleeping because what good was sleeping anymore? What use did anything serve? Her son was dead, and the one that she had comforted as he wept, sobbing for the brother he had loved as well as a father, was as good as dead.  The child in her womb would be allowed to live she thought a chill creeping across her flesh even as there was a spark from the hearth.  _I may die before she is born._

It was not death she feared, not her cousin Steffon’s angry son. There were things, she had realized long ago, that were far worse than death—losing hope, losing freedom, losing that boy whose practice-yard scrapes she had kissed and whose songs she had listened to for the melancholy Rhagar sang was the voice of her own melancholy and she had never known whether to be saddened or comforted that Rhaegar had shared that melancholy too.

And even thinking his name, remembering his face, Rhaella felt a crushing weight on her chest, because her boy, her little Rhaegar, her solace and her pride, he was gone, dead, destroyed and with him, all of their hopes—all of her hopes of what kind of king he would be, brave and good and noble in a way that Aerys never had been, that boy she had raised to be as much like herself as she could.

And a surge of hatred rose within her. How had he lived, how had he survived when Rhaegar had not? Was he truly so resilient, her cowardly brother who had feared everything, who had ruined everything such that, no matter what, Rhaegar would be left with the pieces? How did Aerys still live when Rhaegar h was slain? How did he still rule? His promises of Fire and Blood had ruined everything now, just as Aerys had always ruined everything so long as he had lived.

She stared at the flame, flickering, glowing, receding. Once, she had seen hope in fires, the strength of her house, the beauty of Old Valyria. All fires died, she supposed.


	10. She prayed at night that Tywin had taken no joy in killing her grandchildren

She prayed at night that Tywin had taken no joy in killing her grandchildren. She had seen the pride in his face when he spoke of Castamere, and Tarbeck Hall. She knew he took pleasure in his victory—one more piece of glory to the Lannister name. Were Rhaenys, and Aegon, and sweet Elia who had her mother’s face and none of her nature, to be three more pieces of glory to the Lannister name?

Was all this for Joanna? Every comment that Aerys had made, his actions at their wedding—was it all vengeance? Had Tywin forgotten that she had loved Joanna too, a little sister when she everyone else had died at Summerhall?

Or perhaps he simply had not thought of her. So often, they didn’t. She had never truly minded. She had not wanted the attention, and certainly not once Aerys had fallen into the depths of his madness. But when they had been younger the four of them had eaten together often, and she remembered the days when Tywin and Joanna could do little more than blush at one another. She remembered him asking her, quietly, urgently, and pridefully through gritted teeth if Joanna ever mentioned him, ever spoke of him fondly. Had he forgotten that? She certainly had not. It was his love for Joanna that gave her hope that her brother’s friend was…was more than his reputation of austerity.

She had begged Aerys not to make Ser Jaime a member of his Kingsguard. Spiting Tywin Lannister was poking a sleeping dragon, and when the dragon woke, the wrath would be mighty. It had been the final straw, she was sure, and she could not fault him for his rage in Jaime’s being taken from him. But her grandchildren— sweet Rhaenys who had brought her kitten everywhere and Aegon—always crawling underfoot…Tywin hadn’t stopped until there was truly nothing left of her Rhaegar on this earth, not even his children. Had they all of them been the price of Jaime’s white cloak?  Or was that merely Aerys, stabbed in his own throne room by a boy whose blade he had trusted to protect him—the son of the man who had once been his best friend and most trusted advisor.

How stubborn they both were—Aerys and Tywin both.  Stubborn boys who made the rules and then broke them as they pleased, leaving nothing but destruction in their wake.  When Aerys destroyed, he destroyed quickly, and when he burned through it all, he left nothing but ash and dust. Tywin’s wrath was like the sea: always there, dark in its depths and unstoppable when it struck, never fading—not truly, for when the storm had passed, the sea would remain, waiting, sparkling, brighter than a gemstone.


	11. On Duty

>   
> _“Secrets are worth more than silver or sapphires,_  Varys claimed.  Just so.  I grew so respectable that a cousin of the Prince of Pentos let me wed his maiden daughter, whilst whispers of a certain eunuch’s talents crossed the narrow sea and reached the ears of a certain king.  A very _anxious_  king, who did not wholly trust his son, nor his wife, nor his Hand, a friend of his youth who had grown arrogant and overproud.  I do believe you know the rest of this tale, is that not so?” (Tyrion II,  _A Dance With Dragons_ )

 

On the rare days that Aerys sat the throne, Rhaella always came to the Throne Room.  She stood off to the side, her hands clasped in front of her, watching but not seeing, hearing but not listening, knowing that the sight of her there might calm the minds of those who whispered that Aerys had completely lost his mind this time.  She knew she was a soothing sight for them, at least, even if she was hardly calm herself.

She often forgot that Aerys was younger than her these days.  He stooped when he walked, and hunched when he sat, and if Mother were still alive she would have admonished him for it, intoning that a king should look the part of a king, at the very least, and if Aerys wouldn’t listen, she would threaten him with going to Grandfather. 

What was it that Grandfather had said?  That a king is a king, except when he’s…she couldn’t remember. It hadn’t mattered to her when she was thirteen. She’d been only half-listening, picking at her food and altogether too bored with the dinner conversation.  Sometimes she mourned the little girl she had been, a girl long dead to her own mind, who had dreamed of valiance and bravery and whose heart had filled her mind with the foolish belief that she too would be allowed to wed for love.  She almost laughed at the thought.  Grandfather had said that she would come to love him as a wife in time, if she was mindful of her duty.  Grandfather hadn’t known what he would become.

Of late, Rhaella wondered what her duty truly was. For years, she had spent her days carefully choosing words, not letting herself be the weakness in Aerys’ reign.  He had Lord Tywin, of course, who was his strength, but how many times through history had a queen been a king’s weakness while his hand his strength?  Was it not her duty to serve her king as best she could, in whatever ways she could, providing him with her sons, and the every appearance of loyalty, keeping his courtiers at bay while he felt the world lost sense around him?  The appearance of loyalty was easy enough.  She was doing that right now, standing in his courtroom, watching as he slumped in his seat, her gaze distant and not overtly cold.  But she could not love him—she had learned that many years before, and her Grandfather’s words that she would come to had turned bitter in her mind for now she could scarcely call him brother.

She mourned her brother—her true brother, the brother she had played with as a little girl, who had a fondness for kittens and who had always watched her sewing with a frank curiosity, even if he was scared of the sharp tip of her needle.  Strange now that he sat among blades which cut him far worse than her needles ever could have, though Rhaella, at least, was not surprised that he cowered at the sight of his own blood.  He had been jumpy whenever she had pressed the needle down through her hoop and he hadn’t said it, but she knew he imagined that it was stabbing through the skin of her hand, of her stomach.  She mourned that lost little boy as she mourned the little girl who had written nameless letters to Ser Bonifer Hasty, sealing them with a kiss and blot of pink wax and a sigh that he might find some sort of joy in her words of praise.  But both were gone now, and the memories of them were near as painful as the nights where he—

A king is a king, except when he’s…what  _was_  it that Grandfather had said?  Oh what a silly little girl she had been!  It involved the realm, she remembered that much, because cousin Steffon, up visiting from Storm’s End, had asked him what he had meant by “realm” and Grandfather had smiled and told him that it was a fine question, and the most important one to ask, and then had gone off into a long and boring explanation that Rhaella hadn’t even bothered paying attention to. 

If Aerys were…if he were that boy who had too many kittens, he would remember.  He had been listening to Grandfather’s every word, because in those days, when he had had no hope of becoming king, he had simply wanted to be the best grandson Grandfather had, and that meant memorizing his every word.  But she doubted that Aerys would remember, and she dared not ask him.  That…that would only lead to trouble, and if Rhaella were to cause trouble, she would prefer that Aerys not be involved, for when Aerys was involved, there was fire, there was blood, and there was pain. Better that such matters fall to Lord Tywin’s hands and  _gods_  how she wished Aerys had listened to him when he’d offered his Cersei for Rheagar. 

A king is a king, except when he does not serve the realm. 

That was it. 

A king is a king, except when he does not serve the realm. 

It is a king’s duty to serve the realm.  It is a wife’s duty to be loyal to her husband. 

Her grandfather had been full of ideas of duty and loyalty and what did they all mean in the end? Where did duty end and where did life begin?  For one could not ever fulfill all of one’s duties.  Was it not also a mother’s duty to protect her son?  To provide her son with clear council and guide him to wisdom and bravery?  She had done that.  There were many things that you could say about Rhaella Targaryen, but let it never be said that she had done a poor job raising her son, that his head was full of dreams and that he shirked his duty and his destiny. He was a fine prince—and would make a fine king, the finest king the realm had ever known, would ever know.

So which duty was it, then?  Which duty would she be known for?  Her loyalty to her husband, to her king?  That maternal role of making the world best for her children?  Or perhaps it was a third.

A king is a king, except when he does not serve the realm. 

It could scarcely be said that Aerys served the realm, even as he sat there on the Iron Throne, high above them all.  He left the ruling to Lord Tywin, and Lord Tywin did it well, but Lord Tywin was not the king. Was Aerys serving the realm in leaving it in Lord Tywin’s hands, or did he abandon it, did he show that he was unworthy of his crown simply because he himself did not make any attempt to serve?  If she were to ask these questions—any of them—aloud, she would be told not to worry, though, as if the thoughts in her head were to great for her, as if she was only allowed to think of the pain he visited upon her on nights after he lit his flames.  She supposed that they all feared what she would think, and that they had feared it a long while, marrying her so young lest she…lest she what?  She didn’t know.  What could she have done?  Would she have done anything?  Or was that stupid little girl only mindful of the duty her grandfather put in her head, and not mindful of the world that told her what duty was?

Why was it that only men were allowed to think on the roles of kings?  Why was it that only a king could dictate what a king could be?  She remembered Nymeria, easily confident in the knowledge that she would rule Dorne, and Joanna who had had ambition, but hadn’t lived long enough to see those ambitions realized.  Rhaella hadn’t wanted anything, of course, but she had been young then.  Not the foolish little girl who had cried into her pillow when Grandfather had told her she was to marry Aerys and she couldn’t marry Bonifer, but an older girl, a sadder girl, one who was not gone, merely grown to realize that her lot in life was not just what others saw, not just a battered queen and exhausted wife. She was more than that—more than they saw, she _was_ —so why could she not also muse upon the role of kings?

For ultimately, in serving her king, was it not also a queen’s duty to serve the realm?  And when the king did  _not_  serve the realm, which duty triumphed? Wifely submission, queenly loyalty, or the aspirations of the mother?  Were they not all linked together?  For a queen, if she lived long enough, served more than one king—she served her husband, that much was true.  But any mother would hope to live long enough to see her son take her husband’s seat, to see what the fruit of her labor, of her time, of her love and life might do when he takes charge.

_And what of my son?  Would my son not serve the realm, brilliantly and well?  Would he not make a finer king than that slumped and bedraggled man upon my Grandfather’s seat?_

Fear suddenly gripped her.   _Treason_ , she thought, though it was not her own voice that said the words. It was her Grandfather’s, and she could see his baleful stare, could see him sitting the Iron Throne before her instead of Aerys, as if he had never burned at Summerhall, as if he had been there the whole time.   _You think treason, Rhaella_.

 _It is only treason because you name it so, and you are a king,_ she thought angrily at his voice, as though he could truly respond,  _How is it treason to serve the realm?_   Even after all these years, she was furious with him, he who had ruined her life more thoroughly than Aerys ever had, who had consigned her to a life of duty rather than a life of love and beauty.  Her Grandfather, to whom she had brought sprigs of lavender to from the gardens, sprigs that made him smile at her and kiss her cheek and say that she brought youth to his weary old bones, though, now she thought of it, he was not so old as all that.  But what is age to a child?  All men seem old when they are older than you.  And yet, Aerys seemed oldest of them all, with his great tangled beard and his fingernails which grew as long as daggers.    _What makes you more fit to see what is right for the realm than I?_  

Grandfather had had no way of knowing what Aerys would become—had had no way of knowing that Aerys would take the throne at all.  But he had told her before she had wed that she would give birth to the line of the Prince Who Was Promised. 

And had she not?  Was Rhaegar not that prince? He was  _her_  son, her little boy, who chose his words carefully and did his best to keep a cool head for a cool head allowed for control.  Rhaegar was  _her_  son more than Aerys’, she had carried him in her womb and raised him through his youth.  He was a fine young man and he of all people could see what his father had become. 

He was old enough now.  A man grown, wed, and with a son on the way.  He would sit the throne and look more a king than Aerys ever had, as fine a king as her grandfather—finer.  Surely Rhaegar must wonder as she did what would happen if his father was sent to spend the rest of his days far away on Dragonstone, and leave his son to rule, the Prince Who Was Promised indeed.  Surely he must at least wonder.  He was no fool, her son.

Fear gripped her heart, a deeper fear than any she had felt before in her life, and in that moment she knew she could not say a word—not one word—of the thoughts in her mind, for if anyone learned she had been less than dutiful…But she could watch, she could wait.  She was good at that by now, gods only knew.  And if Rhaegar sought to act…She would be ready for him.


	12. On Marrying Aerys

And just like that, the dream died, and everything shattered into a million tiny pieces. Just like that, hope and joy were dead, and all she had left were memories that grew ever more pale in the passing of days and weeks. Had the tourney been colorful? Had there been green in the trees and the different shades of blue in the ocean and the sky? Or was it all pale somehow? Had she willed those colors to life as she watched Bonifer ride?

She had wanted him to kiss her, wanted it as he had presented her with the crown of roses, her pink and pearl favor still on his arm. She wanted him to bend down and press his lips to hers—there before them all for surely she too could wed for love. But he had not kissed her, only her hand as she extended it to him, and he would never kiss her now, only Aerys, only Aerys…

There weren’t enough tears in the world for her to cry,.  That she had wished for, prayed for Bonifer and had been presented instead with her brother, and told to smile for she was upholding tradition, would bear a line of great power…there weren’t enough tears in the world.

And whenever she smiled it did not reach her soul, for could her soul ever forget those lips she had never kissed?


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written for [neverlietoyou](http://neverlietoyou.tumblr.com).

Everyone had noted the effects that the stay that his time in Duskendale had wrought upon their king. How he seemed quicker to ire, and harsher of opinion, how he found humor in the cruel and did not even bother hiding it. Rhaella heard them whisper about it, when he wasn’t in the room, or when they thought that she could not hear. He was, they said, well and truly mad. Something in him had snapped, they said.

And Rhaella wanted to laugh, for that much—at least—she had known from the moment he had come off his horse, his eyes glazed and his beard matted. Quicker to ire, harsher of opinion, and humor in the cruel—those weren’t even the half of it. For now, when he saw fire, be it the light of a candle or the roaring pyres that he burned the unlucky on in the Throne Room, he turned to her, and it was only Rhaella saw the true difference between her brother before and after Duskendale.


	14. She always had everything, didn’t she?

She always had everything, didn’t she?  She could make men laugh at the drop of a hat, while Rhaella always felt like she was teetering on the edge of a staircase, unsure whether what she would say would be more like the graceful descent befitting a princess, or a misstep that would make her trip and fall and break her ribs.  But Joanna…Joanna had a way with words that made everyone always seem to just…to just…fall at her feet.  They never fell at their feet for Rhaella.  Never.  Even Meriah, who had been at court with Rhaella for longer, who was older than both of them, had loved Joanna instantly, while it had taken her nearly three months before she and Rhaella were truly in one another’s confidences. _  
_

Why was it that Joanna always pretended that she could never rise so high as she would like? _I’ll never be_ queen _though,_ Joanna had said when they’d been girls, before Summerhall, in the early days of her marriage.  Why would she want to be queen?  Was she so blind that she did not see what it would mean for her to be queen?  Or perhaps she didn’t care, though she certainly seemed upset enough at Aerys’ advances.  Rhaella had never understood.  To be queen she would have to marry Aerys, and yet she protested she never wanted Aerys. _  
_

Yet she always made it seem like there was so much more out there for her to take, so much more that she did not have, but _how_  could she not see that she already had more than Rhaella had ever had.  She was not forced to marry Tywin at her father’s command while in love with another.  Joanna  _loved_ Tywin, loved him to the point of an almost embarrassing lack of propriety.  She loved him nearly as much as Rhaella had loved Bonifer, but Rhaella was a princess, and didn’t she realize that her duty was to her family and she couldn’t just go off and marry a landless knight, though her uncle had married Lady Jenny for love.  Why was it acceptable for Uncle Duncan to ignore his royal duty and Rhaella had to marry  _Aerys?_ And Joanna…Joanna had Tywin, who loved her and even  _smiled_  at the sight of her—though a more serious man Rhaella had  _never_ seen, and Meriah had always japed that there must have been a spear shoved up his ass during the War of the Ninepenny Kings because that was the only explanation for his severity—and Joanna had ensnared him from the first and now he was  _hers_  just because she’d wanted him.  

Rhaella had never wanted Aerys, never, and Aerys had never wanted her.  He had protested  _thrice_  as loudly as she had when father had commanded them to marry, and she was sure that he’d thought to marry one of the ladies he seemed to be perpetually falling in love with.  They’d been quite the pair, crying over dashed dreams, and even after Rhaegar had been born, even after Father’s coronation…Joanna denied the rumors, denied them  _fervently,_ but regardless of whether or not they were true, she had had Aerys’ attention—that much was sure.  And gods, Aerys was not so mad as to throw himself at her during her wedding unless he thought she might welcome it, was he?  He would not tempt Tywin’s wrath on his happiest day?  He’d never known how to leave things be when they weren’t his, not even when they had been small.  He had always assumed that everything and everyone was his, always taking her friends, taking her ladies, and why couldn’t he have left Joanna well enough alone, she was  _Rhaella’s_  lady, couldn’t he have set his sights on someone else and let her have  _something_?  And it wasn’t even that Rhaella  _wanted_  her brother to look at her the way he did Joanna, but gods it was unfair, for why was it that Joanna had everything and Rhaella had had nothing?

But no—no she would not be shrill.   _A princess is never shrill, Rhaella_ , her mother had said when she’d gone and begged her to reason with father, for father always listened to mother.   _Just because you wished to marry your brother does not mean that I do_ , Rhaella had shrieked, and her mother had gone pale.   _It is not a matter of will, Rhaella.  It is a matter of duty.  The Prince who was Promised will come from your line—yours and Aerys’._ _  
_

She had Rhaegar.

Rhaegar was hers, at least, and he would never be Joanna’s, not  _ever_.  

And when the wedding festivities were truly over, she would dismiss her from her service.  She did not need reminders of Joanna’s victories around her constantly. 


	15. goodbye girlhood

when did it die? did it die with her family in summerhall, or before, when her father had not listened to her pleas and grandfather said nothing? did it die with the birth of rhaegar, a tiny babe to clutch to her breast, a boy so small in her arms? she is barely more than a babe herself. for all that she’d heard her mother speak of a woman becoming a woman when she flowered, rhaella had felt no different when she’d first felt the blood between her legs.

things are different now. now she’s not a girl anymore, though she is not yet four-and-ten. she has a son now, and a husband, and no grandfather to smile at her warmly, and no grandmother to rest her hand on her head and tell her to be strong and brave and willful because if you are not, how on earth should you find your place?

rhaella had never known what it was to be willful. she had thought she had, but that was girlhood. had girlhood gone when her father had made her marry? when she’d learned that her will meant nothing if it was subject to the whims of the father who bade her obey in the name of duty?

she knows she is young still. she knows it from the way that people shrug her off in a way that they never had her mother, and they certainly never had her grandmother. but she’s never felt less a girl in her life.

that’s what they see—a dutiful princess, a girl with a babe at her breast and no sign of tears though it is clear she mourns. and what does she will? what truly does she will? for there is no going back, and if she is no longer a girl she is a woman, but what is it she wants?

she never wished to grow. she had thought she had, when she was young and life was vibrant and pleasant and exciting, but now…now she wishes she were as young as rhaegar, for even rhaegar knows what he wants, even if it’s milk in his mouth or the comfort of her arms.


	16. There are tendrils on her stomach.

There are tendrils on her stomach.  Pale tendrils, that were once purple but faded when her skin sagged.  Pale tendrils that cross one another, stretched this way once, stretched this way a second time, and that way a third.  Never the same.  If only they could expand like wings around her dead babes.  But instead they are scars on her stomach.  Pale twisted scars like her pale twisted children.

A woman’s battle is the birthing bed.  Rhaella’s heard it a hundred times–time and time again from her septa growing up, and her ladies when they try and comfort her when the blood comes again.  If a woman’s battle is the birthing bed, then she must be the greatest warrior of them all, for not only has she emerged victorious but her babes did not survive the battle. The greatest or the worst.  She cannot tell.

She once was more than a womb, wasn’t she?  Once more than some failed womb whose fruit was rotten at birth?  Or perhaps she wasn’t.  Perhaps it was a dream to think she was, married so young without any heed to her protests.  Only ever a womb, and Aerys’s stinger inside her flower.  It didn’t feel a flower.  She didn’t know what it was.  

Once she was slender–a girl in pale gowns to match her pale hair.  Once she was beautiful, a queen of love and beauty.  Now she is thick.  Thick like a tree with bark that adds a ring every year, a ring for each babe she does not birth, a ring for each babe who dies, with tendrils wrapping around her stomach, signs of growth, and life that once grew within her.  She wishes she were young again.  Young and slender and beautiful, instead of fat and old and lonely.

She wonders what sort of tree she is–a tree constantly shedding seeds that never take root and grow.  A solitary apple tree in an empty orchard, perhaps, whose fruit is rotten from the inside, but who flowers every spring just long enough to give fruit again.  

And here she is, giving fruit again, full of some new boy who won’t survive the year–Viserys this time, she will name him.  And when he dies, she will bury him alongside his brothers, her other dead saplings, and when spring comes again, she will have to try and flower once more.


	17. "She smells Dornish"

“She smells Dornish.”

Rhaella sees Elia’s neck straighten, her chin raised and her lips pursed as Loreza’s ever had whenever Aerys had said something to irk her.   _She looks so like Loreza_ , Rhaella thinks.  

Loreza would have narrowed her eyes and hissed at Aerys, king be damned.  But Elia simply says, “Your Grace.”  She dips into the briefest of curtsies and crosses to Rhaella extending her arms for Rhaenys.  Rhaella hands Elia her daughter, then watches as the Princess sweeps from the room, her neck still stiff.

Loreza had once said that any child of hers would have a spine of steel.  When first she’d met Elia, Rhaella had wondered if Loreza mightn’t have failed.  The girl seemed meek, and quiet–everything that Loreza had frowned upon during her time at court.  But as she saw Elia Martell’s skirts whip around the doorframe of the chamber, Rhaella wondered if perhaps she was wrong.

 _“Not everyone fights with a sword,”_ Loreza had once said, when Rhaella had tried to convince Rhaegar to work harder in the yards.  This was before he’d been determined to train, when he was a quiet and bookish boy.   _“Some are born for mace or spear.”_

Loreza had always said the spear was more of a subtle instrument than a sword.  Swords were for hacking at men, for throwing your body at them.  Spears could be subtle and strong and could kill a man just as well far or near.

Elia Martell’s spine was a spear.  Rhaella did not doubt that her daughter would hold a grudge quite as long as her mother had.  Aerys only looked for swords–for the weapons that men brought into his court, especially after Duskendale.  He never looked for the distant weapon, whose wielder was just out of arm’s reach.


	18. forgive me, your grace

she has felt like death before.  that is not new to her.  when her body is too weak to move, and everything hurts.  that is not new.  

what is new is the lightness in her head.  she has not felt this lightness in years.   _rhaegar_ , she thinks,  _my sweet boy.  will i see you in the seven heavens?_

he will be there, she is sure, her rhaegar.  for all his sins, he is not aerys.  surely he will not burn in the seven hells.  surely the seven will see him and love him.  surely they will not keep him from his own sweet babes.   _it will be as it should have been,_ she thinks.   _as it should have been.  without_ him.

she holds her babe do her breast.  little daenerys, she has named her.  a sweet girl, a brave princess, a bringer of peace.   _you will bring peace, my little love_ , she thinks, not letting herself think the rest, the fear not of a mother but of a queen who knows what tywin does to little princesses.

she holds her girl tightly to her.  a girl at last.  she’d never once wanted a girl.  not once.  she’d dreaded a girl, in truth, though she knew that aerys wanted her to have one for rhaegar to wed.  she didn’t want her daughter to marry her brother, for all rhaegar was no aerys.  she wanted what her mother hadn’t given her.   _who wanted what her mother hadn’t given her.  are we all doomed to want what our parents can’t give us?_

she hears the door open, and looks at it.  the room is too bright for all it is dark.  it is part of the dying, she thinks.  her eyes cannot focus, but she sees her sweet boy, her viserys, hovering between the doors.  he does not usually hover.  he is a prince, the precious prince, the one who lived after so many who didn’t.  the world is his to walk through and he knows it.  but now he hovers.

“forgive me, your grace,” she says to him.  her voice is dry.  they had given her water and wine to drink, but her voice is dry.  

“mother,” he whispers and runs to her, diving onto the bed and burying his head in her side, burrowing into her like a boy.

she runs a hand over his hair, thin and pale and waving like her own.  she should say something, though her head spins and she doesn’t know what.  “you will be the greatest king that ever lived,” she whispers.  “you will be the glory of our house.”  

“yes mother,” he mumbles.  “please don’t go.”  

so they have told him, then.  she looks down at him, and sees her own violet eyes looking up at her from a face that’s long and thin and so like rhaegar’s.  “you must be strong for me,” she tells him.  “you must be brave like aegon the conqueror, and wise like jaehaerys the conciliator, and kind as…” had any of them been kind?  these great kings of her house?  she cannot remember.  surely one of them must have been.  surely… “kind as ever a king has been.  and love your sister, viserys, you are all she has.”

“no mother,” he sobs and buries his face against her again.

“know that i will always love you, whatever happens,” she says again.  her voice isn’t dry now.  or maybe it’s that fuzzing sound in her ears, and viserys’ hair brightening against her eyes that distracts her.  it is so distracting.  so bright.  brighter than anything she’s seen–a sign from the gods that he will be great, as great as rhaegar, as great as aegon, greater than them all, the one who will remember her as more than just some broken battered wife of some mad king.

she tries to move her arms but find them heavy.  she tries to breathe, but finds her chest won’t move.


	19. #she probably used her own crown :(

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for nobodysuspectsthebutterfly/mindset

> [#she probably used her own crown :(](https://tumblr.com/tagged/she-probably-used-her-own-crown-%3A%28)

he will be sad.  he’d hardly spoken for days after the news of rhaegar had reached them.  he’d been subdued, and had barely touched his food and had gone to bed early even though he was at an age where he was always trying to stay up later than he ought.

he will be sad, and she is not.  that is the hardest part.  

she is scared.  that she cannot deny.  her boy is only a child, and a child king is a dangerous thing in a realm where his throne has been taken by those who are older, stronger, bolder.  viserys is not bold, so she must be.  

“my love,” she whispers to him, reaching out and pushing a lock of hair from his forehead.  “my love, look at me.”

he does, and his violet eyes are curious.  “my love, the king your father is dead.”

he doesn’t say a word.  that she’d been expecting.  his eyes go bright with tears, and she sees them begin to leak out of the corner of his eyes, his mouth widening in sorrow.  

that is the hardest part, that he weeps for him.   _you kept him from the monster_ , she thinks as she draws her son to her, bending his body around the swell of her stomach.   _you did not let him see.  and it is for the best._

“let your tears out now, my love, for from today forward, you must not cry.  a king cannot cry.”

she feels him trembling in her arms, so small.   _he is so young. just a boy._ if only rheagar had slain steffon’s son on the trident, then her boy could just be a boy, and would not bear the weight of kingship on his small head.

he hiccups, and looks at her.  “what of aegon?  is he not the king?”

rhaella closes her eyes, her heart thudding in her chest.  she thinks of that small boy with his inquisitive eyes and the smile that had reminded her of a princess she’d once known with amber eyes and a wicked tongue.  “you are the king, my love,” she says sadly.  “aegon is with his father now.”

“and rhaenys?  and elia?” viserys asks her desperately, panic in his voice, and it’s all rhaella can do not to cry herself thinking of the fate they’d both met.   _if he cannot cry, i must not_ , she thought.   _i must be his strength.  i cannot fail him.  i am all he has._

“they are with rhaegar as well,” she says.

viserys lets out a great choking sob, and rhaella holds him as tightly as she can, running her hands through his hair and kissing the top of his head and wishing that the babe in her belly did not keep him so far away from her.  

when he has used all his tears, rhaella pulls away from him and looks at her son.  his face is splotchy, red and white around his purple eyes.  his hair is messy from her fingers.   _and he is the king_ , she thinks.

part of her wants to run.  she knows it is a death sentence, that robert baratheon cannot let her boy live.  part of her wants to take viserys across the sea, find some magister who will find great honor in hosting the last targaryens and let him live out his days in luxury, turning his back on the fire and blood that had brought him hear.  

but she could not.  to do so would not save him.  robert would hunt him, hunt them both. 

 _i hate him_ , she thought viciously.  _i hate him, for all i loved his father.  he is a brute and a coward that he’d kill my child._

she kneels before her son, her king, and removes her crown.  she turns it in her hands, and settles it on viserys’ head.  it is too big for him, and would slip down if she didn’t angle it carefully.

“long live the king,” she whispers to him, and viserys takes a deep breath and squares his shoulders and looks petrified.


	20. however sweet it may be

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> for buffyspinkpanties

rhaella looks at the baby crawling across the floor of her bedchamber.  he is larger than rhaegar had been at that age, and more robust than the boys she had lost.  hearty–that’s what the grand maester says whenever he looks at viserys.

it is quiet in the keep.  empty.  tywin had brought a strong host when he left the city to rescue her brother from the dun fort.  “they’ll know not to defy the power of the crown,” he had said stiffly to her before he’d gone, though they’d both known that that was not true.  they’d taken aerys, after all.  the crown was weak.  it is lord tywin they would fear defying.   _reyne and tarbeck at his back.  what will he do to darklyn?_

the castle is eerie when empty, and rhaella relishes the peace of it.  hardly a sound–no whisperings and laughter.  the whispering and laughter always makes her feel more alone than moments like this when it’s just her and her son.  it’s been a long while since she’s had a true friend at court.

_if he doesn’t come back, rhaegar will be king_ , she thinks.  but no–she mustn’t think that.  that is treason, however sweet it may be.

 

 


	21. rhaegar died

pain wracks her body.  she’s no stranger to this pain.  she knows it well.  an old friend.  an enemy, she’d once thought, for it tore at her until she couldn’t breathe, and then her babes did not even live, but perhaps not anymore.  not anymore.

 _live like my rhaegar,_ she’d once begged the babes sprouting from between her legs.   _live, and be strong, and smile._ but none of them had–save viserys. now she can’t even wish that as tremors wrack her.   _rhaegar died_ , she thinks, and she screams again, though she is not pushing now–she screams until her throat is raw.   _rhaegar died._

she’d been barely more than a girl when he’d been born–her solace in loneliness, the one person in the world who truly loved her.  with a smile and a song, he could make the pain stop, and though her heart broke with every babe she lost to the stranger, she always had her rhaegar.  her boy, her prince growing taller every day, who read like a maester and fought as well as any of the kingsguard.  her serious boy–and slain by steffon’s son.  

she screams again.  her voice sounds as though it is shredding itself, it feels like her skin is tearing itself asunder, in her throat, between her legs, her heart beating so fast that it must surely break through her weak chest so violent is its pulsing.  she screams, though.  she screams and sobs, and cries, and what good is it all the pushing and the pain if all her babes die, if even rhaegar dies?  

 _live like my rhaegar_ , she thinks though whether to herself or to the babe, she does not know.   _live like my rhaegar, but if you die, die like rhaegar too._

**Author's Note:**

> I have written some Rhaella drabbles that exist in my [November Drabble Series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/860076). Since I'm not going to post them twice, here is a directory if you're interested.
> 
>   * [Summerhall had been worse than this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2550200/chapters/5669642)
>   * [better not to feel anything at all.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/8443999/chapters/19836472)
> 



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